The invention relates to a method and material for photographic processing.
The basic image-forming process of photography comprises the exposure of a silver halide photographic recording material, such as a color film, to electromagnetic radiation, and the chemical processing of the exposed material to provide a useful image. Chemical processing involves two fundamental steps. The first is treatment of the exposed silver halide material with a developing agent wherein some or all of the silver ion is reduced to metallic silver, and in the case of color materials, a dye image is formed (because of a color developing agent).
For color materials, the second fundamental step is the removal of silver metal by one or more steps of bleaching and fixing so that only a dye image remains in the processed material. During bleaching, the developed silver is oxidized to a silver salt by a suitable bleaching agent. The oxidized silver is then dissolved and removed from the material using a xe2x80x9cfixingxe2x80x9d agent or silver solvent in a fixing step. Black-and-white materials are desilvered using only the fixing step.
Additional photoprocessing steps may be needed including rinsing or dye stabilization that require even more photoprocessing chemicals. In the case of color reversal materials, additional photoprocessing steps include black-and-white development, a reversal step, pre-bleaching or conditioning step and one or more rinsing steps.
All of these photoprocessing steps require preparation of the photoprocessing compositions (whether in aqueous or solid form), large or small photoprocessing tanks or reservoirs to hold the compositions, and disposal or regeneration of the xe2x80x9cspentxe2x80x9d compositions once a predetermined amount of exposed material has been processed. All of these operations require considerable manufacturing effort, shipping and handling of chemicals and aqueous solutions, replenishment of the solutions, and disposal of solutions into the environment. These characteristics of conventional photoprocessing are labor intensive, tedious, costly and potentially harmful to the environment (although much work has been accomplished in the industry to make the compositions more environmentally xe2x80x9cfriendlyxe2x80x9d).
New business opportunities are thought to exist if ways can be found to minimize or obviate the problems described above. Providing photographic images (often known as xe2x80x9cphotofinishingxe2x80x9d) is a growing business and yet there is a need to provide those images in ways that do not require some or all of the traditional photoprocessing solutions, equipment and replenishment systems.
As noted above, a fixing step is commonly employed in photographic processing. WO 93/12462 describes a method of fixing a developed photographic silver halide material comprising at least two silver halide layers sensitised to different regions of the spectrum, comprising placing the material in face-to-face contact with a fixer sheet in the presence of a processing solution and a silver halide solvent which forms a solubilised silver halide species from the undeveloped areas of the material, wherein the fixer sheet contains reducing means capable of forming metallic silver therein from the solubilised silver halide.
Recent digital technologies in the photographic industry offer advantages in that they can enable the user to manipulate the images after photochemical processing by scanning to create a digital representation of the image. One of these advantages is the ability to readjust the exposure by automatic tone scaling to correct for either over- or underexposure. Other uses of digitization are to crop, enlarge or otherwise modify the image, or to send the image to other users electronically for various purposes. The growing awareness of digitization of photographic images provides almost limitless possibilities for image manipulation for various purposes in a number of industries.
A method of fixing or clearing a photographic material is required that may be done in a substantially dry condition, that is without water having to be provided in addition to the fixing agent. Unlike conventional fixing, there is no requirement for the silver complex formed to be removed from the emulsion layer.
The invention relates to a method of providing an image in an imagewise exposed photographic silver halide material comprising at least one silver halide emulsion layer, the method comprising developing the silver halide and fixing the remaining silver halide by contacting it with a molten composition comprising a silver halide complexing agent which is present in sufficient amount to render the silver halide substantially clear.
In another aspect, the invention relates to a photographic silver halide material comprising at least one silver halide emulsion layer on a support wherein the material also comprises a layer of a composition comprising a silver halide complexing agent which is liquefiable by heat and which, when molten, is in reactive association with the silver halide.
The invention provides a rapid means of processing photographic films which may subsequently be scanned. The silver halide grains are rendered non-scattering or transparent to light by dissolving the light scattering silver halide. The image is rendered more stable to subsequent light exposure. Scanner light may pass readily through the film and the level of optical noise reduced. The present invention allows the film to be rendered transparent by means of a simple, dry lamination and heating step.